


Forgetful

by angelcult



Category: Be More Chill - Iconis/Tracz
Genre: Coming Out, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Introspection, Kinda, Menstruation, Michael Mell Has Two Moms, Pining, Skipping Class, Trans Male Character, Trans Rich Goranski, he is also one of the best boys, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 00:43:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20612102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelcult/pseuds/angelcult
Summary: Rich is very forgetful, he forgets lots of things (even his phone!) but he forgets a date he probably should have had saved in his phone but luckily for him, Michael Mell is a saint.





	Forgetful

Rich forgets things  _ a lot,  _ he forgets to eat or drink, it easily slips his mind that he should sleep sometimes until his mind has muddled and he can barely deal with the headache he gets from it, or rather, lack thereof. 

That’s why it really shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he forgot  _ something else  _ that he couldn’t easily cover up. 

He was in class, paying attention but also focusing on doodling little things in the margins of his paper to help him along, it was much easier to focus that way without falling asleep from the teacher’s relentless droning. 

With his Squip “gone” (he could occasionally hear her voice which was just a tad more comforting than Jeremy who could  _ converse  _ with his if he so much as felt like it) there was no forewarning when he felt a warmth pooling between his legs. It didn’t quite register at first but when it did, Rich sat up straight. The sudden movement got him a couple of glances but other than that no one was paying him any mind. 

He was in the back of the classroom, having relocated there ever since he’d gotten out of the hospital, which was thankful for. It was subtle, the slight opening of his legs and a glance down, relief flooding him when he didn’t see any blood but that didn’t mean he could sit there for much longer before there  _ was  _ blood soaking through the dark fabric. 

Without so much as raising his hand, Rich quickly left the room, ignoring the pause in the teacher’s speech but also not noticing the pair of eyes that followed him out the room. 

He stormed into the boy’s bathroom, glad to see that it was empty as he shut himself into a stall. He hadn’t grabbed his book bag which would more than likely had at least  _ one  _ pad in there (he still felt uncomfortable at the prospect of a tampon even if they were considered ‘cleaner’ not that he had much proof of that claim).

“Fuck!” He hissed, kicking the wall before immediately regretting it. At least he wasn’t cramping, which would have made the day go from slightly bad to definitely bad. It’s not that anyone knew he was trans, even if he wore muscle tees, no one seemed to pay attention to his black binder, writing it off as an undershirt.

“I better not fucking..” He quieted himself to grumbles when he heard the door open and the sound of feet shuffling in.

Slightly bad to  _ bad. _ He sincerely hoped it wasn’t a student, because at least if it was a janitor, they wouldn’t say anything about Rich’s panicked pacing. 

He could go to the nurse, but then the nurse would call his father, and then his father would come up to the school (if he wasn’t passed out on the couch) and they would drive him in silence and he didn’t want to consider how the rest of that could possibly go (if they even drove in silence, ‘else it would be a screaming match that Rich would lose because he  _ always  _ lost to his father) when the person who’d entered spoke up.

“Uh, Rich? I know you’re in here, I can see your shoes but are you alright, man?” 

Ah, it was just Headphones, the geeky kid who was kinda (very) cute. He didn’t really speak much, unless he was talking to Jeremy who he seemed to focus on most of the time, often times he overheard him calling Jeremy his “favorite person” which was really sweet to Rich.

“Yeah, Headphones, I’m fine.” He was fine too, until the absolutely terrible pain in his lower abdomen that made him curl into himself and breathed out heavily through his nose. He laid his head against the door of the stall, now acutely aware of how much he was bleeding and how his pants were probably ruined now.

“Fuck!” 

“Rich?” He heard Michael lean against the door from the other side and he breathed out heavily through his nose.

He only had one real option here that he found to be much less embarrassing than walking to the nurse’s office.

“Hey, uh, Michael?” He began, and he could only imagine the look on his face, as he never called him by his first name unless a situation was deemed serious enough to warrant it.

“Did you, by chance, grab my book bag?”

“No, uh, sorry, man, the teacher wanted someone to come make sure you were alright because you left in a bit of a hurry.”

“A bit” translated to the fact that Rich had practically ran from the room. 

“Jesus, okay, uh-“

“What’s going on, Rich? Is it the Squip? I don’t have any MDR but I can probably knock you out-“

“Michael, how sweet of you to offer to harm me bodily but I am,” He inhaled sharply, “in enough pain as is. The Squip isn’t.. She’s not back, I just-“

“Wait, are you on your period?”

“What?” Rich stared at the door with wide-eyes, knowing Michael wasn’t fucking with him because Michael never said things like that, not to joke around, anyway. 

“Oh, are you not-? I’m sorry, I didn’t-“

“Michael.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d you know I was..” He opened the door and took a little step back, deciding that this should be a face to face conversation. “How’d you know I was trans? Did someone tell you..?”

Michael looked a little uncomfortable, or guilty as he spoke. “I uh, kinda realising your undershirt wasn’t an undershirt?”

Rich ran a hand over his chest and Michael rubbed the back of his head nervously.

“Fair enough. Yeah, I’m on my period and I may or may not have left everything in the classroom.” This was the easiest coming out Rich had ever had, not that he did it much, the only person who knew besides his father, and now Michael, was Jake.

Michael nodded and pulled his bag over his shoulder, looking through it before looking back up at Rich. “Pad or tampon?”

“Excuse me?”

“Pad… or tampon-?”

“No, I heard you, I just- Why do you have those?” 

Michael smiled a little. “For Chloe and Brooke, but also just for anyone who may need them, in this case,  _ you. _ ” 

Rich smiled back and realized that he probably couldn’t wear a pad in boxers, and he wasn’t sure that he was ready to test out his “just shove it in” theory with tampons in a school bathroom with his friend right outside the door.

“Or, we could totally ditch school and find you a change of clothes.”

And then Michael decided to be even more of a godsend than he already was.

“For real?”

“Yeah.”

Rich decided that that was a much better option and since Michael was already in the know, he could ask another question that had been bothering him. 

“Is there anything on the back of my pants?” He spun around and looked at Michael over his shoulder. He gave a glance before rubbing the back of his neck and nodding.

“Eh, little bit?”

“Fuck!”

“I could lend you my jacket? Just tie it around your waist and it’ll be all good.”

“Headphones, that’s like, your favorite jacket. I really don’t want to get blood on it.”

“Dude, that’s literally the last thing I’m worried about. It’ll come out.”

“It could stain.”

“So? Just,” He dropped his bag to the floor and took his jacket off, shoving it into Rich’s hands. “Actually, you could probably just put it on and it’ll..” 

Rich tested Michael’s theory, which was correct, and sighed at the more than obvious height difference between them.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“What about my bag?”

“I’ll ask Jeremy to get it. Let’s go before the bell.” Michael looked strange without his jacket, he was wearing a shirt with a pride flag across the chest that read “we are all human” and decided that Michael, for all his shyness and occasionally nerdy jokes, was too good a person to lose.

They snuck out easily, getting a confirmation text that Jeremy could pick up Rich’s bag as he had that class next period but he was curious as to what they were sneaking out for.

“I told him we were getting stoned and he just went with it.”

“You.. Didn’t have to lie to Jeremy. I know he’s like, your best friend and shit-“

Rich was sitting in the passenger seat on a towel he’d practically forced Michael to lay over the leather as he drove.

The inside of the car smelled like weed, vanilla and tacky car freshener spray. 

“I’m not gonna out you to Jeremy, even if he is my best friend. That’s not cool, man. Besides, if you do decide to tell him, it’s not like he’d be mad or anything. He’s not that kind’a person and he understands the want for privacy about things like this.”

Michael smiled at him, a quick glance before his eyes were back on the road. 

“Do you want anything from the store besides clothes? I think my moms have a heating pad somewhere but I’m not sure where so I can buy one, or like, literally anything else than you can possibly want.”

Rich wondered if Michael was always so selfless, and he couldn’t even say that he was being pitied because he already knew the answer. Michael Mell was selflessness incarnated, he always puts himself last, he could remember it from their conversations while he was in the hospital. 

Always about Jeremy, never about himself. 

Was he real?

“There’s no way I’m letting you buy a heating pad, those are pretty expensive, besides we can look for your moms…” Wait. “You have two moms?”

Michael nodded slowly, glancing at Rich out the side of his eye. “I thought you knew? Rich, I’m adopted.”

“Holy shit.”

Michael laughed a little, but he kept his eyes back on the road. “I thought you knew!”

“I thought you were saying, like, my  _ moms,  _ like a term of endearment?”

“No, no, my two separate mothers who raised me from a toddler.”

“Ah, I see. They uh.. They raised you well.” They’d pulled into the parking lot of the store but now they were just talking, or rather, sitting in a silence that Rich had begun to deem awkward until Michael spoke.

“Aw shucks, Rich, thanks. Now, you never told me, what would you like?”

Rich sighed once he realized there was no talking him out of it. 

“Fine, fine. Here are my requests,” He watched Michael pull out his phone and show him the notes app. Rich smiled at that, Michael was so full of good that Rich didn’t really know how to describe it. 

“Twizzlers, the lemon kind,” Michael nodded and Rich continued. “Cookies and cream ice cream and lastly, a b-“

“I have beer at home.”

“You’re a saint.”

Michael winked and then he was gone and Rich promptly decided to analyze the last half an hour he’d been with Michael Mell. 

He came to a few conclusions, the one at the top of his list being that Michael Mell was probably an angel of some sort, guardian maybe, or maybe he was one of those angels you weren’t supposed to look at too long or else your eyes would melt and you’d burst into flames. 

Terrifying.

Yeah, that was fitting, Michael terrified Rich with his honesty and sincerity, with the way he was so willing to help Rich that he ditched school not even halfway through the second period.

Not many people would do that. 

Rich allowed himself to drift, tapping around on his phone. He had some messages.

Jake wanted to know if he was okay, Brooke was in his first period and he just told her he was sick so Headphones Kid took him home, in those words.

He was worried that he’d bleed through the towel he was sitting on despite never being a heavy bleeder but he felt that he’d been sitting there too long and maybe he should have asked for more towels too. 

His thoughts were going to spiral when the car door opened and a bag was being handed to him. 

“I’m back! I got a half pint of ice cream, is that okay?”

Michael, good and caring and worried about  _ ice cream. _

“That’s more than okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was more self-indulgent than not, but also, very soft to write. Feel free to comment!


End file.
